Waihi and the Geysers at Rotorua

After surviving the Christmas holidays, we continued south to Waihi. A nice little town with remnants of a gold mine. We found a very nice little café there and were able to soak up some sunshine after the cold night in the DOC in the middle of the forest. Afterwards, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the nearby beach of Bowentown. In the evening, we found a very nice and cheap campsite with a dog and several cats as neighbors and finally went jogging for the first time. Despite the wonderfully beautiful landscape, the area is rather moderate for jogging as there are hills after hills, so it's always either steep uphill or downhill. Then we had another cold shower :)

The next morning, after a week of struggling to keep milk, eggs, and meat cool, we discovered porridge with fresh fruits as a very practical breakfast for us, as it only requires water and fruit. We spent the day in Tauranga with traditional fish and chips, freshly caught right at the harbor in a fish hall. Many parts of English culture have made it unscathed to New Zealand. This dubious culinary highlight, which is a "must" in Tauranga, is one of them. Affordable.

The journey to Rotorua was accompanied by the wonderful smell of rotten eggs, which became more and more intense the closer we got to our destination. The cause of this is the many sulfur springs in this geothermally extremely active region. It steams, hisses, and boils out of the ground at every corner. The Maori have been using these springs for cooking, heating, and washing for centuries - despite the smell.

This impressed us so much that the next day we took a trip to the Thermal Wonderland. A whole park with a 3 km circular path full of lakes in the most unnatural neon colors, bubbling mud pots, and spouting geysers. The natural wonders to see here and what slumber directly under and partially on the surface of the earth are truly impressive.

Our next stop was the town of Taupo, right on the shores of Lake Taupo with the snow-covered volcano Tongariro in the background. What a beautiful scenery...